Self-Segregation

An old student of mine posted this Eddie Murphy video clip on Facebook and it stirred up all these old memories in my head of one of my first best friends, Ellen Nyree Stewart (Ny).

Ny and I met in kindergarten. I'm not going to say we met at the sandbox b/c that sounds too cliche, but I think maybe we really did meet at the sandbox. We met the day we all came in for a trial half-day of school and were inseparable throughout elementary school. She lived a decent walk from my house, and next door to super-cute twins Billy and Ricky Malkowicz who were two years older than us. I always went to her house to play. We'd play this one game called "wild pig" where we'd hide under the end tables on either end of their couch and pretend we were in a jungle and a wild pig was after us. We would have to run to the bathroom where the waterfall was to secure water in little perfume bottles to survive. Of course, on each trip to the waterfall the wild pig would emerge and we'd run screaming hysterically back to our tables. God...the imagination of children is unbelievable.

Besides our friendship, Ny and her family were my first education of African-American America. It was at Ny's house that I watched Eddie Murphy on Saturday Night Live and his other comedy skits (the ice cream one from above that I still remember verbatim), listened to Chaka Khan's "I Feel for You," and watched Ny's mom do her hair, applying grease to her scalp (which for someone who still has perpetually greasy hair was ultimately confusing to me, even with her mom's explanation that White folks have too much grease in their hair and Black folks don't have enough). At one of Ny's birthday parties, her mom took me aside and asked me if I was okay. Confused, I said I was and asked why. She said, "Because you're the only white girl here." Damn! I hadn't even noticed. I did notice after that, but it didn't really matter.

Not until sixth grade. In middle school, suddenly we all self-segregated. I can still visualize the cafeteria clearly and the table where Ny sat with the Black kids, the table where the metal/slutty kids sat, the table where the preppy kids sat (me)...Ny and I just stopped talking. Our friendship ended without any official closure, as T.S. Eliot would say, "not with a bang, but a whimper."

But my question is, how did that self-segregation happen? It wasn't discussed, orchestrated, or anything. On day one of middle school, that's just where we all fell. WHY?????

I have searched for Ny on the internet, Facebook, all over but I can't find her. I feel she gave me something during those early years of my life that still resonates in me--the knowledge that there can be common ground with those who might, on the exterior, seem different from me. When I look up in my classroom and realize that the majority of my workday is spent being the only White person in the room, I wonder if--deep down--my comfort with this has anything to do with my early friendship with Ny. Who knows...

When I was little, I had the famous "I heart NY" pin on my little girl purse. I had no idea it meant I love New York. I thought it meant "I love Ny." And I did. She was a great friend.



(Note: One of my daughter's best friends at daycare now is a little Black girl named Anaya whom Alexandra calls "Nya" and I can't help but see a repeat in history...)